Renowned film star Jacqueline Bisset believes she’s an even better actress than she used to be, certainly backing up such a statement by turning in one of her bravest roles of her career to date, in Abel Ferrara’s contentious drama Welcome to New York.

Inspired by the now infamous Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, Bisset plays Simone, the beleaguered wife to Gérard Depardieu’s sociopathic, somewhat repulsive Devereux, who is going through a court case following his sexual assault on a hotel maid. Bisset, who shines in her supporting role, tell us that she’s better now than she’s ever been, which is certainly saying something, given she’s starred in productions such as Bullitt and Murder on the Orient Express, across what has been a truly illustrious career.

“I’m a much better actress now than I was then,” she said. “I have a lot more life experiences, and I understand the medium. I have much less fear. I had some small parts that weren’t very interesting when I started, but I don’t regret them. They gave me the opportunity to watch and learn from real, experienced people. Lots of situations in life I think, that turned out to be a good thing. It looked like a disappointment, but it turned out to be a good thing, so I’ve looked at things positively like that.”

Welcome to New York certainly has a somewhat tragic pertinence, and it’s emblematic of an actress very much in the present, not wanting to look back. “I don’t tend to think backwards. But when watching myself in films, I go ay yay yay. There are one or two films that I’m proud of, but most of the time I see the inexperience. Sometimes I look sweet or whatever, but I was not in control of my voice. It would rise when I was nervous. Then at some point I got hold of it and it represented who I was, and from that moment on I became much less self-conscious.”

For most of us, had we starred alongside the likes of Steve McQueen, or Paul Newman or Ingrid Bergman, we’d probably sit there all day replaying our movies over and over again, and wallowing uncontrollably in nostalgia and pride. But not Bisset – who claims to rarely watch her own productions.

“I don’t often watch my own movies,” she said. “I’ve always had a detachment from things. When I started working in films, my first part was in a Roman Polanski film, and he asked everyone to come to watch rushes with the whole crew. It was wonderful, to see takes three or four times, and I became interested in the rushes – not just my own, but other people’s too. I used to go religiously, though I haven’t for 10 years because they don’t do it like this any more, they just give people tapes. But I learnt how to act from looking at rushes. You get that discipline with yourself, and I was always rather lucid about things, and I don’t know where that came from, but I’ve always been like that.”

There’s a certain pragmatism towards the industry, and while being such a treasured Hollywood star, Bisset has never been one for fame – which she believes to be a notion shared by her on-screen collaborator, Depardieu.

“I like the public that I’ve met, but I don’t want that massive fame. I can’t deal with it, I can’t cope with it. I don’t think Gérard does either in a way. It interferes with a normal, intelligent life. You can’t have a conversation with somebody without people interrupting. It’s not fun. Everything is about you, and you get embarrassed. Somebody wants to take a picture, okay, that’s part of the business, but I don’t want that. People just eat you alive.”

“Gérard has to put up with a lot of fame in a way that sometimes, I feel like he’s had enough. Part of him would just like to get the hell out. He has this life and he’s known by everybody in France, an enormous star. The way people have attacked him about his weight, I mean, obviously he is overweight and one worries about him for that reason. But people get so upset about the weight and I think, golly, physically so many people are like that. People’s reactions are strangely very judgemental. He’s a masculine man and he has charm.”

bisset depardieuBisset has nothing but kind words to say about her co-star, praising a performance that could well be described as a tour de force for the esteemed French performer. “Gérard is great. He’s an energy bomb and he’s open, kind, fun, exuberant, potentially explosive, but not in a bad way. Those grunts, you know? [laughs] I suspect he could have quite a temper but he’s a gentle person too. A good sport.”

Those aforementioned grunts made up much of the opening act, as this unforgettable piece begins with little dialogue, instead the opening half an hour is made up mostly of Depardieu’s animalistic grunting, or the reverberations deriving from the sound of his fleshy palms aggressively slapping against the rear end of a prostitute. Bisset, naturally, was somewhat taken aback when she finally got round to seeing the finished product.

“I didn’t know about it. I knew there was stuff, but I didn’t have any idea it was going to be like that. When I saw the ad campaign and the trailer, it gave me some sense it might be like that.”

In regards to her own performance, Bisset admits that Strauss-Kahn’s real life wife, Anne Sinclair, was something of a springboard for her, but she didn’t base the role on the journalist in particular. “I used some of the situation, but I didn’t really use her. I read about her, and was fascinated by her, but I didn’t feel that my role was her,” she said. “Partly because she was such a luminous character and a very beautiful, clever woman, very charismatic with a lot of twinkle. I used to see her in France doing her interviews sometimes, I was aware of her as a journalist. But that wasn’t in the script so I didn’t feel like I was dealing with her. This was more about addiction.”

“My process was actually a curious one with this particular film. As I had never worked with Gérard, and din’t have the chance to get to know him – though I had met him in 1989, but he reminded me of someone I used to live with. So when I worked with him people thought we knew each other well, but we didn’t know each other at all. It was easy with him, but I did use somebody else to find my way to Gérard.”

Depardieu joins a long list of hugely renowned actors to have shared the screen with Bisset (we haven’t even mentioned Charles Bronson, Woody Allen or Sean Connery yet), though she admits there are still more out there she’d love to work alongside. However, she admitted at her age, and in this industry, it’s not always as feasible as one might have hoped.

“Michael Haneke is a brilliant director, on a different level. I don’t even know if I could handle it, I hear he’s very tough. But I just admire his films,” she said. “There are a lot of actors I’d like to work with, in the right role. I like Sean Penn, and Javier Bardem, I like De Niro. I’d love to work with De Niro. I don’t know what the role would ever be, because they always put the older men with younger women. That’s just the way it is to some degree.”

Welcome to New York is released on August 8th, and you can read our review of the film here.